At 2:45 PM -0400 10/24/00, James M Galvin wrote:
>I really like your analogy to postal mail:
I love analogies (and I know they drive some folks crazy...) because
they help us map new things into the space of the known world -- not
just by indentifying how the analogy relates to it, but where the
analogy falls apart. To some degree, I see it as a way of
understanding what's already known (based on real world analogs) and
what parts we have to focus on understanding (because the real world
analogs fail or aren't relevant). Effectively, it's debugging by
boundary condition testing...
>In my opinion, VERPs belong at the envelope layer, not in the message
>(i.e., individual addressing), because I try very hard to enforce the
>postal analogy to an extreme: you don't steam open the envelope and mess
>with what's inside.
At a philosophical level, I agree. that's why I don't look footers on
mail list messages, but in practice, view it more as sticking a
label on the outside of the envelope, since I'm careful to avoid
whacking the content, and instead append it to the end.
But to play games with terminology, when I'm putting the address in
the "to:" line, I'm not steaming open the envelope. I'm attaching a
mailing label to the outside -- you're looking at the envelope too
literally here with VERP. all I'm doing is choosing to use a more
correct (or perhaps specific is a less loaded word) address on that
mailing label I paste on the envelope.the header *is* part of the
envelope, even if it's not 'envelope' in the terminology of SMTP.
If you really want to get literal about it, what I'm doing is what my
bank does with my bank statement -- print the address on the
statement, and use an envelope with a window instead of printing it
on the envelope itself....
>For the record, I strongly support the use of the List-* headers.
>Although a lot of elists use them, the real issue is getting the email
>clients to do something useful with them.
which is a chicken/egg thing. clients won't support them until MLMs
use them. MLMs are now starting to support them, so it's a matter of
time. We sometimes tend to get into the mindthink that if it doesn't
happen overnight, it never will -- and even on the internet, we need
some patience (hell, we need a lot more patience. I get tired of
living in overdrive...)
>Anyway, marketing is one thing and technical issues are another.
>Although I understand why what's happening is happening, on balance I
>don't find the technical reasons compelling. Nonetheless, your analogy
>has "bumped my balance" just a bit.
which is why it's nice to talk these things through. It's given me
some things to think about, too, as to ways to best do this (and when
not to...). I'm not for customization for customization's sake (I
really hate false familiarity in messages), but you wouldn't believe
what a little personalization does to make people happier. One big
problem with MLMs is I think they tend to emphasize this impersonal
aspect, which I think encourages trolling and flaming. After all, the
messages are from a list, not people on a list. Little things like
the "To:" can help reset that mindset by turning lists back from
things to people using a thing, and we can only benefit.
I'm not saying this is a solution. I'm saying I think it's one small
piece that helps...
For instance --
Recently I modified my "goodbye" messages sent to people who
unsubscribe, so that they say that we're sorry to see them go, and
adds a mailto: link if they want to send us feedback on why they're
leaving. The most common note I get back is "we're not! we're just
changing addresses" -- but the second most common is simply thanking
us for asking. And given the internet's propensity to gripe at every
opportunity, that I see so few gripes when I'm ASKING people to take
a final shot as the door shuts is interesting, but the reaction on
simply being asked kinda stunned me.
People WANT to think you care. And it's little things that make them
think that. Calling them by name instead of "occupant" is a little
thing, but it (IMHO) changes attitudes in subtle ways, both from the
point of view of the admin and the recipient. It's something I really
want to study down the road, and I think "To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]" does
this a lot better than a footer that says "Your'e subscribed as
[EMAIL PROTECTED]", whic to some degree reinforces the
impersonalization aspect. That comes across to me more as an implied
"we don't want ot have to bother looking you up", as opposed to
"here's the email we wanted to send you".
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Be just, and fear not.
